Hear No Evil
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: Haven't you ever wondered what kind of person the Hero of Time really was? He starts off as an innocent child, but his true colors are a little unorthodox. There's more to growing up than just dungeons- the people you meet in life are just as influential.
1. Secret to Everybody

**_Disclaimer:__ I do not own the Legend of Zelda._**

_Also, as a side note- I periodically reread my stuff and proofread it again, so this chapter is the revamped (and better) version of the old one. The others will be likewise improved soon. For those of you looking for what the plot is, this is a retelling of Ocarina of Time with lots of details, side stories, and speculation added, as well as some fan theories that I am particularly fond of. The chapters can be read as individual 'one-shots', but they all go together as a set, if you want to follow the story._

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_Part One-Secret to Everybody_

There, in his dreams, the sky was blue and as pure as a robin's egg, disturbed only by the occasional puff of white drifting across its perfect surface.

Here, where he opened his eyes, the sky was a yellow haze marred by the trees jutting up into it like the quills on a porcupine. He looked out past the woods and to the valley, following the sparks of nymphs as they danced on each other's heels.

Yes- In the forest played many spirits, and with the spirits played many children.

Some of the little mortals had wandered in on their own, some had been abandoned inside, and still others had been pulled in by the imps of the wood and the promises they whispered. Once the children had entered, the forest proved to be not only dark and tricky but possessive of whatever came into its clutches, wrapping its visitors in its own ancient magic and bending them to its rules; they would never grow past ten nor would they ever leave the enchanted woods. This did not bother the children, however. All the adventure and excitement they could ever want was in the expanse of trees that protected them from harm. In fact, if you asked the Kokiri children how they got there, not one would be able to tell you. To them, life began only after they had been guided into the forest by the glow of the fairies and the song of the leaves.

And guided the children were- to further enforce the mutual love and understanding of the forest and its adopted kin, each child had a beloved companion in the form of the very fairy that had illuminated the path through the dark woods to the forest meadow they now lived in. Like everything else in the world of magic, the guidance of a fairy had a dual meaning to the wise woods.

Creatures that failed to be good enough to befriend a sprite would be lead in circles until they lost their minds and became a monster, doomed to spend the rest of eternity searching for the exit in madness…

Indeed, a fairy was the symbol of being a Kokiri forest child. No Kokiri was without one, as it was impossible to get to the core forest meadow in the first place unless a fairy was guiding you.

Alas, every rule has its exception.

Link was a child who did not appear particularly outstanding in the crowd of Kokiri - his hair was a common shade of blonde, and his skin was the same color as everyone else's. His long ears had been stretched and shaped by the melodies of the wood as all the others' had been, and his height and young features were a Kokiri standard. Everything about him was perfectly normal for a forest child, but he was still never accepted by the other children.

The long and short of it was that Link had no fairy, and that made him an outsider.

On this particular day, Link was napping in the woods beyond the Kokiri's meadow, dreaming of a perfectly cyan sky. He thought it odd because he had no memory of ever seeing one outside of his dreams, but in them they were almost constant. As he slowly opened his eyes to see the yellow blanket spread above him, he pondered the thought of another sky actually existing.

He often did wonder if he could rise above the saffron of his world and see the blue skies that were beyond it.

A loud thud interrupted him from his reverie, and he rolled over to see if his one and only friend Saria had arrived.

Link was disappointed to see a redheaded boy searching awkwardly through the grass. The newcomer was not anything like Saria, and Link wondered if the boy was planning a mean prank. He watched him in silence as the other grunted in effort as he tramped through the grass.

After a long while of the other boy's oblivious pillaging of the earth, Link decided that he wasn't in any danger of being picked on. He stood up and walked toward the other child.

"What are you looking for, Shad?"

Shad's freckled face popped out of the grass in surprise, his green fairy bobbing around behind him. He considered Link's sudden appearance for a moment before answering.

"I am looking for a caterpillar." Link inquisitively cocked his head to the side.

"I want to watch it turn into a butterfly. Linder," Shad nodded to the fairy, "says that's what a caterpillar does. It goes into a cocoon stage first, but…" Shad was a know-it-all like his two brothers, but Link knew that he rarely got the chance to be the center of attention. He took advantage of showing off whenever he could. "… Anyway, I want to watch it."

"How are you going to watch it for that long?" Link asked. "Are you going to stay out here with it for days?"

Shad looked like he had been caught doing something bad. He searched around the immediate area and whispered to Link only when he was certain that nobody else was around.

"I'm gonna put it in this." Shad pulled out a glass jar with a stick and several leaves in it.

Link had only heard stories about glass from the fairies. According to them, the evil adult man had once come and ruthlessly captured the fair folk in clear prisons of it before leaving the woods. This display of malicious intent was the basis for the forest's rejection of grown people. But that was just a fairytale, right? Link dubiously reached out his hand and was amazed when he did indeed come into contact with a smooth and nearly invisible surface.

"Where did you find this?"

Shad grinned. "It's a secret to everybody."

Link shrugged and began to help Shad find his test subject. He went over to search a nearby tree, Linder following to help examine the nooks and crannies.

Linder was a chatty sprite, even more so than his child. In about five minutes, Link found himself laughing and joking with the little green fairy and all his shyness and earlier suspicion forgotten. The caterpillar was found and Link, Linder, and Shad began to walk back to the forest meadow together.

As they talked, Shad realized that he liked Link's company. He couldn't understand why all the Kokiri picked on him- Link was smart and fun to be around once he came out of his shell. In fact, Shad was beginning to think that a fairy wasn't the only marker of a kindred forest child.

"Y'know, Link, I don't think I've ever heard you talk so much," Shad mused aloud.

As they crested the hill above the village, Link's shyness began to reemerge. "You probably won't ever again," he mumbled.

"Huh?" Shad wasn't able to hear him clearly. Linder had, and changed the subject as to dominate the conversation and distract both children. He wavered to and fro around the glass prison and reminded both boys of the terribleness of being imprisoned.

The fairy's words had quite an effect on the two Kokiri. Shad had just finished promising to Linder that he would release the caterpillar if it didn't like living in the jar when he tripped on a tree root.

Slick as the glass it was made of, the jar flew from Shad's hands and crashed on the ground, shattering in pieces. With it, the lighthearted mood was destroyed and the companions forlornly gazed at the fragments.

The trio kept still until Link regained his wits. Cautiously, he wandered over and scooped up the unharmed caterpillar, careful to not scare it any more than it already had been.

Shad got on his hands and knees and continued to stare at his mess.

"Shido and Malo are going to be so mad," he whimpered. "They're gonna yell at me and never let me borrow anything again." His sniffing evolved into tears.

"Whad' am I gonna do?" He wailed to Linder.

Link looked from the broken glass to the weeping Shad. It wasn't fair for his brothers to punish him for an accident.

"Why don't you just tell them I did it?" Shad looked at Link like he was sprouting another head.

"No! I can't! They'll be mean to you!" His lower lip trembled.

Link smiled sadly. "They are already mean to me. Let me do this for you."

Shad stood up slowly, his childlike innocence showing in his eyes. "I don't want that to happen to you. You're my friend."

"You were nice to me and talked to me today. I want to do this for you."

Shad looked like he wanted to argue, but Linder gave him a gentle push towards the forest meadow. At his guardian's urging, the boy ran to his home with Linder following only after giving Link a nod.

Turning back to the glass, Link admired how its surface made the light from the yellow sky turn a light blue, like the skies in his dreams. He reached down to take a piece so he could show Saria and tell her about what happened today, but he decided against it when the sharp edges cut his hand.

He'd just have to keep it a secret to everybody.

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Thank you for reading- I hope you will be kind enough to review!


	2. Unlikely Bonding

_Part Two- Unlikely Bonding_

In this dream, there was a ceiling of rock over his head in place of a sky. He was creeping over and around uneven, jagged, black stone in intense heat and the weight of an unknown object resting across his back made him feel like he was suffocating. Suddenly, a great rumbling and shaking coursed through the cavern and he turned to and see the rocks piled up around him begin to writhe into the shape of an enormous monster. With a roar, the great beast rose and reared up on its hind legs, showering spittle of molten rock around the cave before its feet crashed down upon the ground with a thunderous sound. Its teeth, like stalactites, parted once again and the back of its huge throat glowed like embers, brighter than the sky, brighter than Saria's eyes, brighter than even the glow of the fairy dipping and weaving around the monster's head...

Link sat at the foot of his tree house, happily carving away at its base. He'd finished a sloppy caricature of himself and a shaky orb that was meant to be a fairy companion and had started on the head of his rock dragon. If only he could get the teeth just right, then it would be perfect to show Saria.

"What's that?" A dreadfully familiar voice made Link drop the rock he had been carving with as he turned to face the speaker. Mido, the self-proclaimed boss of the Kokiri, stood behind Link, watching him draw. Link knew, with an insight few children had, that Mido was nothing but a bully who liked to throw his weight around and not a true leader. He decided to try to ignore him in the hopes that Mido would go away.

However, Mido's persistence continued to be as boundless as his disapproval of Link.

"Hey, fairyless, I asked you a question. Or are your messed up ears the reason you don't have a fairy?" It was true that Link's ears were slightly rounded on the end, but it was barely perceptible to the casual onlooker.

"I'm drawing," Link mumbled.

Mido ignored Link's answer, his attention changing to the whereabouts of the girl he liked. "Where's Saria?"

"She's with the Great Deku Tree," whispered Link.

Mido pouted. "She's _always_ with you or with Father."

The name the Kokiri called the great tree at the edge of the forest meadow was Father, as he protected them from harm and taught them the stories of the forest. In fact, Link was the only one to call the Great Deku Tree by his full title, as Mido had told Link that he wasn't a _real _forest child and unworthy of being a son to the deity. And even with all of his doubts on Mido's authority, Link believed him.

"The Great Deku Tree is really smart and tells her stuff," Link retrieved his rock and resumed the teeth on his picture.

"I'll bet you can't go because Father doesn't trust a boy without a fairy. Grinning cruelly, Mido saw that he had again hit Link's biggest weak spot. "Yeah. He knows you'll become a Stalfos for sure."

Link gave an involuntary shiver. Stalfos were the twisted forms of those who were lost in the ancient woods without a fairy. Secretly, Link was terrified that he would become one during his many expeditions into the woods. Saria had always told him not to worry so, but the awful though was always was nagging at the back of his head.

Gazing at his monster drawing, Link pretended that Mido's comments hadn't bothered him.

"Is that s'posed to be you?" The bully gestured to the carving.

"No," Link lied.

"Yeah, it is. It's even got your dumb hat."

Link frowned and absentmindedly adjusted his emerald cap. It had once been short and square like the one Mido wore, but was now elongated from being mended so many times by Saria after Link had repeatedly torn it on their excursions.

"It isn't dumb," defended Link weakly.

"It isn't the way it's supposed to be. You couldn't even keep it in the right shape." The bully snatched Link's hat off of his head.

With a yell of upset surprise, Link forgot his picture and dove to get his hat back. Mido began to play keep away with the smaller boy, but stopped when he got a better glance of the monster Link had been carving.

"Whoa!" He knelt down to get closer, abandoning the hat. Its owner quickly snatched it up before Mido noticed. "What is that?"

"It was in a dream I had." Link shoved his green headwear back where it belonged and started again on his masterpiece.

Completely mesmerized, Mido watched Link continue his drawing until he found something else to criticize the artist for.

"Wait a minute! You're too dumb to use the right hand!" At Mido's outcry, Link looked at his fingers and wiggled them. He turned his palm over, thinking that there might be something stuck on it that had grabbed Mido's attention, but didn't see anything unusual about it. He decided the other boy was pulling his leg and began to draw again.

With a cry of exasperation, Mido tore the stone from his hands.

"Use this hand, stupid!" Mido started adding stripes to the beast with his right hand before moving onto the stick man.

"What are you doing?" Link tried to pull Mido's arm away. Being bigger, Mido easily shoved Link off.

"Geez, fairyless, you really are stupid. You gotta fight that thing with something." He furiously engrained what appeared to be a letter 't' into the stick figure's hand.

"What is it?" Link peered at it suspiciously.

"It's a sword, stupid."

"Huh?"

Mido's eyes began to twinkle.

"I heard a story once. A lot of people ran into the forest, see? And when the adults became Stalfos, the children helped the forest by killing the monsters with a sharp cross thing they found. It wasn't rock or wood, though. It was made of metal and called a sword. And then, the forest was so happy that the kids became Kokiri!"

"What happened to the sword?" Meek though he was, Link's curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Mido answered with a thwack to Link's back. "Father hid it, stupid, so we wouldn't hurt ourselves!" He paused. "It was really powerful."

After examining the picture one last time, Mido stood up and turned to go.

"It looks better since I fixed it," He declared, tossing the rock at Link's head.

"Ow!"

"Bye, Mr. No-fairy."

Link watched Mido's retreating form and picked up the rock that he had thrown. Idly, he pocketed it before looking at the picture on his tree house before realizing that was the nicest Mido had ever been to him.

Maybe he would tell Saria about it later.

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As I have said, I am revamping and re-uploading a few of these chapters to make them better- I write fanfiction for both fun and improvement. If you see something you like or hate or want to see (read?), please tell me! Thank you!


	3. Shopkeeper

_Part Three-Shopkeeper_

This time, he was floundering through a sea of tall, slippery creatures, each one rushing by him as if stopping would hinder their ability to breathe.

He struggled around in the mass of slick commuters as he tried to get to dry land, but was too inexperienced of a swimmer to make any headway. He felt himself go under and began to panic as he started to drown. Suddenly, something grabbed his foot and began to pull him in the opposite direction. After a blur of bubbles, he felt his head break the surface and he exhaled water and gasped.

His savior let go of his foot and smiled down at him in a strange, fishy way as it handed him something.

Link began to wake up and couldn't make out the meaning of the words the lifeguard had said.

With that dream as motivation, Link had taken to improving his swimming skills in the little pond at the center of the Kokiri Forest meadow whenever his best friend was away. He was getting pretty good- at least, he could swim faster than Saria in a race (and outdoing her in anything was impressive, in his opinion.)

He pushed off a boulder in the water and tried to get to the other side and back in one breath.

When he succeeded, he made a great splash of returning to the surface.

"Hey!" yelled a voice. "You got all my stuff wet!"

Link whipped his sopping head around to see a soggy Ahzull furiously moving satchels of things out of the way of the water, his grey fairy bobbing up and down in perturbed agreement.

"What is all that stuff?" Link tentatively asked.

"Stuff for my busy-ness! And you got it all wet!"

Ahzull was incredibly short, incredibly gruff, and incredibly quiet- almost more so than Link in his silence. For him to yell so angrily was a cause for curiosity.

"I'm sorry," Link whispered.

Ahzull grunted in reply and began organizing the contents of his bag into piles, giving a wide berth to the pond Link was floating in.

Link took this as an acceptance to his apology; Ahzull had always acted little more than indifferent to the fairyless boy. "What's a busy-ness?" he ventured.

"When I trade this stuff for other stuff."

"Oh." Link paused. "What kind of stuff?"

"Those colored rocks that sparkle." Ahzull's eyes also began to sparkle like the gemstones he spoke of- they could be found all over the forest and in the center of the larger rocks (which Mido liked to break by throwing them at Link's house before giving the pretty fragments inside to Saria. She usually yelled at Mido for it instead of accepting his gifts, which didn't help much despite her intentions.)

"I like those colored rocks a lot," he finished.

"Will it work?" Link asked.

"Of course it will work! Everybody wants this stuff." With a sweeping gesture, Ahzull showed off his merchandise.

Link saw the appeal of the stock: Deku nuts to throw as pranks, long and sturdy sticks for pretend sword fights, and seeds for slingshots were among the things Ahzull had already stacked.

"Can I help?" Link was getting excited just looking at them.

"Okay." As soon as he said it, the petite boy stopped to reconsider, narrowing his hair-hidden eyes. "Wait- you aren't gonna try to take the stuff and the sparkly rocks, are you?" The rumors and slander spread about the boy without a fairy had reached even his ears.

The thought hadn't even crossed Link's mind. "No. You can keep all the sparkly stones."

That was all it took to convince Ahzull, and he nodded in consent.

Link leapt out of the water and shook himself dry (away from Ahzull's piles, of course) before going over to help him organize.

"What's this?" He pulled out a flat piece of wood with a familiar symbol smeared on it in red berry juice.

"A shield." Ahzull's habit of short answers didn't explain much, but Link was satisfied with it.

Pretty soon, the two boys had set up a nice little kiosk and were doing rather well- a few passers-by gave them business.

"Where are we gonna keep the stuff when it's bedtime?" Link asked suddenly.

"Can't we leave it here?"

"No. Mido might take it."

"Oh." Mido's bullying hadn't been reserved for just Link- he had been known to be mean to the others in the past. Because of his short stature, Ahzull was also a frequent target. At least, he had been until Link was old enough to divert Mido's attention.

"What about your house? It's your stuff."

"Hey, yeah, I can turn my house into a busy-ness! That's a good idea!" Ahzull grinned and began moving his wares into his house across the pond. Elated by his playmate's words, Link basked in the small praise.

The two worked quickly and excitedly, speaking more than either thought the other capable of doing.

They had just finished rearranging the furniture into suitable positions when Link noticed that Ahzull was too short to see over the makeshift counter.

"Let me be the counter-man. I'm tall enough."

"What's a counter?"

In reply, Link patted the table in front of their wares. "This."

"Oh." The petite Kokiri looked from his new counter to his new friend. "What can I do, then?"

"Um," Link thought for a moment. "You can go around and tell people to come to our shop."

"Our what?" Ahzull noticed that Link used lots of new words.

"Our shop. Our, um," Not realizing that the word 'shop' was not native to the Kokiri tongue, Link floundered for an explanation. "Our busy-ness." Link began to wonder where he learned 'counter', too.

"You use funny words."

Still unsure of where he had learned the words, Link took on some customers while Ahzull and his fairy went outside to advertise.

For a while, everything was fine- Link would trade some things from the many piles for what he and Ahzull had decided was a fair amount of stones, sometimes adjusting when someone would come in one or two colored rocks short (Link had been told not to do that, but it had been Shad who had been asking and Link paid for the difference out of his own pocket, figuring what Ahzull didn't know couldn't hurt him.) Shad smiled in chagrin and Linder swiftly interjected with a joke to keep the conversation going.

But, as usual, Link's lack of fairy and personal quirks would be his ruin.

With a fairy perched on his shoulder, Mido strolled into Ahzull's house. Silently, Shad shrunk to the sidelines, afraid of what was could happen next.

"Hey! Now I don't have to go get my own!" Mido walked behind the counter and stretched out a hand to take some Deku seeds. Link boldly stepped in front of him.

"What are you doin', fairyless? Move!" Mido tried to shove him away, but Link held his ground.

"You can't take them because, um," Flustered, Link wasn't sure what words he should use. He was thinking of lots of things to say, but they had all been nonsense to Ahzull and Shad and he didn't want Mido to be able to use them as fuel for his spiteful fire. Besides, he was just plain too scared of the taller boy to make words come out.

"Because um, um, um," mocked Mido, "They ain't yours, is they? This ain't even your house!"

Link knew he had to say something, _fast_, and threw away his mental filter. "This is a shop. A store. So that's why," he squeaked out.

"What kind of stupid thing are you saying?" Looking simply confused, Mido looked somewhat less threatening.

"Uh, well, uh, we… have, uh, things that you can, um, buy and we, uh, sell them for, er, colored rocks." From the shadows, Shad wished that Link wasn't spewing what seemed to be total nonsense, as the words 'buy' and 'sell' were completely alien to him. "See, this stuff is merchandise and you have to pay for it because, well, it's fair that way, um," Link shifted his weight nervously. "Do you, uh, get it?"

Truth be told, nobody, fairies included, had any idea what he was talking about. Mido got the impression that Link was trying to make a fool of him and got angrier than he had been before.

"Are you tryin' to make me look dumb? 'Cause I'll tell you who's dumb- you!" Red faced, he grabbed a nearby stick and struck Link across the chest with it. It broke, and he continued pelting Link with whatever was in his reach. With a yelp, the fairyless boy snatched up the wooden shield and tried to block the barrage as he took cover behind one of Ahzull's shelves. Mido was enraged that Link could defend himself- he ran out of ammo and began to push the bookshelf against the wall to pin his elusive prey down.

Link was sandwiched against the wall and began to wriggle himself out of the situation, using the shield to help him push the bookshelf off. With all of his focus on pressing against the shelf harder, Mido did not notice a panicked Shad take one of the Deku nuts from the sack he had just purchased and toss it at him.

The nut, nature's magic flash bomb, pegged Mido in the side of his face. He screamed as he was blinded and fell backwards, releasing the shelf as he went. Also completely dazed and stunned from the brightness of the flash, Link stumbled into the second set of shelves that contained the rest of the glowing goods. It all went down in a glorious eruption of light that filled the room and streamed out the doorway, catching the entire meadow by surprise. Ahzull bounded in, alarmed.

He saw Mido lying on the ground, totally blinded, and Link, eyes shielded, standing above a fallen bookshelf, broken 'stuff' strewn everywhere. The grey fairy immediately started yelling at Link as his charge kept his distance, seething.

"My eyes! You stupid fairyless idiot!" On the floor, Mido was going ballistic. "It's all your fault! It's always your fault!"

Ahzull scanned the disaster and noticed Shad crouched against the wall, presumably to protect his eyes.

"What happened?" Ahzull demanded.

Shad had been far enough away to regain his vision quickly and stammered out a messy reply.

"What happened?" Ahzull began to lose his temper.

Desperately, Shad glanced at the dazed Link.

"Mido was, um, um…" He wished he were as brave as his brothers.

"I didn't do anything!" moaned the bully. "It was all _him_!" Shad began to become outraged.

"No, it wasn't Link's-!" With a grunt, Link pulled himself together enough to send Shad a pleading message with his eyes. While not at all at a loss for words now that Mido was showing his manipulatively dishonest nature, Shad bit his tongue and obeyed his accused friend's command.

"Make him go! He doesn't know it all! He doesn't know what happened!" Mido was still complaining on the floor. At Mido's demand, Ahzull's grey fairy shooed the freckled boy outside the house, but not after he shared a silent confirmation from the hapless Link across the room.

Ahzull gave the wrongfully accused a glare that could have singed a scrub's leaves.

"I shoulda known you'd be trouble. Get out and don't ever help me with my busy-ness again." Slowly, like he had lead in his shoes, Link obeyed and headed towards the door. But when Ahzull decided that Link wasn't going fast enough, he lost his patience. He leapt in the air and stomped his feet, trampling the hat he had discarded from his head. "I said to get out! Out! OUT!"

Link picked up the pace and left the infuriated Ahzull with the blinded and whining Mido. As he passed him, Link had sworn that he had seen the bully grinning from his place on the floor. Perhaps the 'trouble' Ahzull had referred to Link causing had nothing to do with Link at all-hadn't Ahzull been the diminutive victim at one point? It could be- the littlest Kokiri wasn't one to explain himself.

Did it matter? Link reflected on the events of the day and what he had been doing at Ahzull's "busy-ness."

"_Hey, you ought to be more careful. My buddy has a shop over there and he might be selling something that could help you. Of course, you may not be able to buy any of the merchandise at his store, being a kid and all, but it was worth a shot."_

Was _that_ what the creature in his dream had meant by all those weird words? He felt like he was on the verge of understanding so many things, but that something was holding him back, like the current he had been swept up in while he had slept.

He'd have to ask Saria about all of this later.

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Thank you for reading this slightly improved chapter! I hope you enjoy it! Please read and review- I not only looooove to write fanfiction, but I loooove to improve myself and hear how I am doing in a reader's eyes! Thank you so much!


	4. Fly

_Part Four- Fly_

Despite the unfamiliar black sky and the fact that the foreign air was pushing against him somehow, he knew this dark dream best of all. A white blur would run by, and when he turned around he would be facing a grotesque man with brown skin and rounded ears.

He would look into those eerie yellow eyes and the unfamiliar drops of cold water would seem to fade away- there was nothing but a deep emptiness reflected in the man's eyes and it greedily tried to suck out the boy's soul to fill itself. And as he had no defense against it, he could only stare back.

Link would succumb to a state of panicked paralysis until he could tear himself awake in a cold sweat.

Every night, that dream had been the same and every night it would remain the same. It was as constant as the cloud of dragonflies that buzzed over the small spring that pooled in the center of the Kokiri Forest meadow. Link watched them- reds, blues, greens, yellows, oranges, even a few pinks…

Suddenly, he was snapped from his reverie when a flash of wings cut across his vision and paused on his nose. Link wiggled it to try to get the unwelcome visitor off of his face. When the dragonfly didn't move, he moved his hands towards it and tried to coax it off of his nose and onto his fingers. Obligingly, the insect fluttered onto the new perch and stared back at him with its buggy eyes.

Link was amazed- he'd never seen a dragonfly this color- he'd never seen anything quite this color! It wasn't quite purple, but it wasn't quite blue, either. It was exotic and wild; he had to show it to somebody! He looked around eagerly for his best friend even though he doubted she'd be around.

His gut feeling was correct; Saria wasn't here again today. The Great Deku Tree had been talking to her an awful lot as of late, and Link found himself all alone a whole lot more often as the days passed.

The closest person to him was sitting on the watchtower that the Kokiri had built to play lookout from. Link scrambled up the ramps, dragonfly in hand.

As he got closer, he saw that it was the girly Fado. Link never liked her much, as she was the first to tattle on him or accuse him or tell Mido that he had done something (she only did it when her tall tales weren't true- especially when she had actually been the real culprit.) It didn't take very much to set her off, either, and while Link was aware of this he was too excited to think about any consequences.

Link shoved his discovery into her line of vision without a second thought.

Fado shrieked when she saw the bug and moved her hands from styling her hair in favor of swatting at it. The dragonfly fluttered to the ground, its right wing broken.

"Eww! Li-ink! I'm telling Mido that you shoved a bug in my face!"

"I didn't want to scare you! I thought it was pretty." He sank to the ground and tried to gather up the wounded dragonfly into his hands.

Fado gave it a disapproving look. "It's gross. You should squish it."

Link felt tears welling up in his eyes. "It wasn't hurtin' anything."

As it struggled, Link felt his guilt grow more and more. It was his fault the poor dragonfly was maimed.

"So? It's ickier looking on the ground and it can't fly anymore."

The dragonfly got its second wind and clumsily zipped off Link's outstretched fingers as if to prove Fado wrong.

They watched it fly out of sight, dipping and weaving like a dying man's steps.

"I guess it was a pretty color," Fado said.

Link turned to look at the ground in front of her.

"It was kinda the same color as your eyes." She scrunched her face up in distaste, as if admitting that was like eating something foul.

"I'm telling," she finished, jumping off the play tower and heading towards Mido's house.

Link decided to go back to his own house. He'd ask Saria what color his eyes were later, when he didn't feel so guilty about the dragonfly.

Maybe the nightmare would help him forget about it.

A single blue fairy flitted through the trees as the sun began to glint over the canopy. Their Father, the Great Deku Tree, was calling her and she knew it was urgent. Hastily and callously, she zipped across the great forest and made whatever she came across make way for her. Unfortunately, her direct approach left her little reaction time; she collided against something else in the air and felt it give at her push.

Whatever it was, it fell to the ground and rolled over as the fairy stopped and watched it. It was a beautiful indigo dragonfly and Navi couldn't help but feel that its death was an omen; its left wing was perfectly undamaged, quivering in the air.

* * *

This one by far needed the most help- I'm not even sure I doctored it up enough. I hope you enjoyed it, and please- read and review!


	5. Kaepora Gaebora

_Part Five- Kaepora Gaebora _

It was an endless nightmare of running.

There had been an episode with dying trees and giant spiders and grinning eyes, and the only light had been from a shining green stone- it was shining brighter as he watched the forest die. It was dying, and someone was yelling at him for it (was it Mido?) but he was desperate, _desperate_ to keep going. Mean words flew around him along with some punches, and he thought that for the first time in his life, he'd successfully stood up against someone without Saria's help.

But it didn't matter, because he had to keep running.

Ahzull looked up over the counter when he heard the commotion, but the issue was too far over his head for him to understand.

He headed for the entrance to the forest and tried to block out the cries and screams of the forest spirits as they spread the news:

"He is dead! The Guardian is dead! He has killed our Father!"

The inaudible panic spread across the forest, and he knew that Fado's critical eyes couldn't comprehend anything but the view of his retreating back from her perch. Next to her, her fairy was quivering like a dragonfly's wing.

He kept running, running on past Saria's house.

He fled until he collided into Shad, who tried his best to stop him.

"It isn't safe out there! Stay here, where the Great Deku Tree can protect us!" Shad tried to position himself in front of the path to the bridge.

"The Great Deku Tree is dead," he blurted, and shoved past his friend, ignoring all of Shad's shaky denials and leaving him far behind, splayed on the ground like shattered glass.

He tried to run away from the tumultuous chaos in awakened in his wake- he plugged his ears, but the forest only got louder. He ran faster- if he could get away from the noise, he could get away from the hungry, monstrous eye that was currently searching for him.

"Cursed," whispered the trees.

But he'd closed that eye himself, he'd broken that curse, and he'd saved the Great Deku Tree, hadn't he? None of this should be happening! He did exactly what he had been told to do, as his Guardian, his _Father_, had said. This shouldn't be happening.

_Why was he running?_

The question was louder and louder, almost drowning out the agony of the flora around him. The answer followed, barking out each syllable in time with his feet.

"He is dead! The Guardian is dead! He has killed our Father!"

In the aftershock of such a powerful spirit dissipating, even the woods on the far edge of the Kokiri Forest Valley were reeling and flailing as they tried to stabilize themselves. They expressed their grief at the death of their kin, sparing no creature with the ears to hear them.

"He is dead! The Guardian is dead! He has killed our Father!"

The accusation resounded through his entire being as he veered off the trails he and Saria used to play on. His head hurt from the _noise_, and stars in his eyes spotted out everything.

He was going to go crazy if it didn't stop. He had to escape it. He _had to run faster_- he was getting Lost in the Woods. Despair coiled around his heart as it sucked him in like quicksand. In its catastrophic wake, the aftermath of the death of the forest god was going to strip off his sanity, and then his flesh, until he was nothing but a walking skeleton. He was going to die, just like that, and his body would transform into the monster he so feared. It was like fighting a storm that was so much more than the water and wind that beat onto is face in every other nightmare. _The panic wasn't going to stop and he was going to die because he failed and because Mido was right and Fado had told on him and because Ahzull had trusted him and because Shad had been his friend and…_

And then the noise suddenly stopped.

He was standing on the bridge, and the air had stopped moving. As he focused his blurry vision, he discovered that the forest spirits around him had stopped their tantrums and were lazily floating through the warm, stagnant air like undisturbed leaves on a muddy pond. His eyes didn't linger on them for long, though- his attentions were drawn to the figure standing on the other side of the bridge.

If you had asked his little companion, who trailed in a rush after him, she'd have sworn that this section of the forest was completely frozen in time, like the death of their compatriot Deku Tree meant absolutely nothing. She caught up to her shaken child and circled around the quiet pool of air until she too found what he was staring at.

Saria was there.

She opened her mouth, and Link felt himself slip into a trance as she began to speak. Her voice was soft and low, part of the atmosphere, and he couldn't quite bring himself to answer her and break the melody. He was so completely enchanted by the spell of her words and the woods that all the force it took to move him was the push of an ocarina into his hands.

"I hope you'll come back to the forest and visit," She whispered.

He wanted to believe that there was no reason to visit, that he wasn't going to leave- not ever- but the Great Deku Tree had told him he must. The words froze in his throat.

He took a step back and felt his heart rip out of his chest.

Here his feet were, moving without him.

Link felt himself begin to cry. He really, truly, desperately did not want to go, but Saria's eyes told him that he had to. He took another step back, like he was reeling from an unseen blow.

Finally, he turned and ran, knowing that if he ever looked back he'd never make it. Maybe this was all just a dream, and he'd wake up soon and go tell Saria- the _real_ Saria, the one who'd finish teaching him to play the ocarina and who'd stand up for him when Mido yelled at him- all about this terrible dream.

"Watch out!" blurted Navi.

Link's foot caught on a tree root and he barely perceived himself falling until he was met with a painful greeting from the forest ground.

"Are you alright?" asked Navi worriedly.

_No_, he wanted to say. _No, I am not alright._

Instead he held his tongue and lay face down, nursing his wounded feelings instead of his nose and forehead. All of himself flooded out of his watery eyes and ran down into the dirt until it congregated in the hole in his chest.

The world was quiet and so was Link.

After an eternity in the blessed silence, he began to calm down until he could recount the Great Deku Tree's last request that Link leave the forest and find, well, he wasn't sure what the things the guardian had referred to were.

_It would be foolish to keep going_, he thought to himself. _I don't even know what a "Princess of Destiny" is. And, if Father did give me a fairy, then I truly am a Kokiri._ He watched Navi, his new little friend, dance around his head in motherly worry from the corner of his eye. _If I am a Kokiri and I leave the forest, I'll die._ He gritted his teeth as he felt a bruise that was forming under his eye. _But if I don't at least try to obey Father's request, all of this will have been wasted. And how will I make the others not be mad, anyway? _Tiredly, he rolled over and prepared to meet the sulfurous sky, silently wondering how he should go about this problem.

He probably would've stayed there for quite a long time had the sky peeking down at him not been a bright blue.

It was exactly at that moment that the world's natural music returned and reached out to surprise Link, like the whole setup had been a planned prank.

He jumped up faster than he'd thought possible and began pacing in and about the trees to see if he could find a clearing to see the sky better. Navi fluttered in awe behind him. Looking up again, Link noticed a giant, glowing _ball_ sitting up in the sky, illuminating the whole area! He couldn't believe that was possible and foolishly cast his unguarded eyes on it to see what it was.

Navi answered Link's yelp of pain as it burned his eyes with shouts of her own worry, and pretty soon they began an impromptu shouting match with one another. Navi would shriek, "What's wrong?" and Link, unsure of what to do, would answer with nonsensical screams.

A sudden hoot of laughter volleyed back at them and Link scrambled around to capture source within his spotty vision.

"Link, look up here!"

After another agonizing attack from the light, Link rested his gaze upon the biggest owl he had ever seen. Its wingspan dwarfed the dilapidated branch it was perched upon, with bits of snowy white peeking out of the rich, chocolate colored feathers that started from the wingtip and spread all over the owl's large form. Most noticeable, however, were the intricate markings upon its broad face, right below its beak. Link was amazed at how much they looked like a second set of eyes and couldn't help but stare at them.

"It appears that the time has come for you to finally start your adventure!" hooted the great bird, "You will encounter many hardships ahead, assuming you can get past the perplexing mystery of the light of the Hyrulian sun…"

Link stuttered, still unsure how to reply.

"Can't speak?" The owl flipped its head around until the markings below his beak pointed upward, where his eyes previously were, to get a better look. Unthinkingly, Link followed the movement and felt himself lose his balance and fall over as he tried to twist his own neck the same way.

The owl began to hoot in its obnoxious cacophony of laughter once again as Link tried to put his head on straight again.

"Well, my boy, such is your fate! To be forever clueless!"

Link felt himself flush and abashedly tried to hide behind Navi, who barely covered his nose. The giant fowl only laughed louder at this futile movement and his feathers began to stand on end.

Navi flew up closer to the owl. "Please, sir, he's already discouraged enough! Don't make it worse by mocking him," she scolded. Link felt himself flush in embarrassment.

The owl, over his initial outburst of amusement, preened himself and smoothed over the feathers he had ruffled during his bout of laughter. "Well, now, boy," the bird continued, his voice more somber, "You shouldn't get discouraged, not even during the toughest of times. There's a lot depending on you."

Link nodded unconfidently. Was the owl referring to the mission the Great Deku Tree had given him?

"If you follow this path, you'll find a castle. Inside the castle, you'll meet a princess."

_A princess? Like a princess of destiny?_ Link nodded in reply and pretended to know what the owl was talking about.

"I guess I'll leave you to it, then. You don't have much time before nightfall. See you around." With a flurry of feathers, leapt of the perch and took off into the sky.

"Oh, and one more thing," he shouted over his shoulder, "Don't leave the path!"

Link turned his thoughts away from the events he'd left behind and towards the endless blue sky in front of him, hoping that it held the promise of something better. Navi finished yelling her thanks to their feathered guide and joined Link, lightly flying behind him. They walked in silence and reflected upon their own thoughts.

"Hey, Navi? Can I ask you a question?" Link finally asked.

"What is it?"

"What's nightfall?"

She paused. "I don't know."

"Oh, well. Maybe it's not that important. Maybe it's a meal of the day."

Navi shrugged in reply and continued to follow her little green charge onto the beaten path in front of them, wondering if leaving the forest was the right thing to do after all.

* * *

In my personal opinion, this is one of the points in Link's life that qualify as the most important- so I really want this chapter to be really, really good. Please, if you do't do it on any other chapters, please give me some constructive criticism on this one- any feedback (including flames, if they are funny) would be much appreciated. Thank you so very much!


	6. Stupid Questions

"The giant glow in the sky is most definitely _not_ a giant Deku nut, "Link decided, watching it sink lower and lower in the sky.

"Why did you ever think that it was?" Navi asked.

"What else was I supposed to think it was?" he replied defensively.

"I don't know, Link. I only know it as the sun."

"Oh," Link replied. "What's a sun?"

Navi was a little confused by the question. Hadn't they just been talking about it?

"The sun's the big glowing thing you just asked me about!"

"No, no, I know _that,_ but that isn't what I _mean_." Link tried to elaborate, "I wanna know what _is _it? What's it _made_ of? What makes it _glow_?"

Navi had no idea how to answer that. "I don't understand," she finally said.

"Oh," Link mumbled, acting a little more shyly, a little more like he had in the forest meadow around the other children. "I'm sorry. I guess it was a really stupid question."

"Why do you think it was stupid?" Navi asked.

"Well, because," As he walked, Link scuffed his feet around abashedly. "You know everything, so if I ask something that you can't understand, then it must be that I was saying something stupid again."

Navi was taken totally and absolutely by surprise. "You weren't saying anything stupid, Link," she answered automatically.

"Really?" the boy asked, pitifully hopeful.

Navi paused, trying to find the right words to lift his self-esteem. "You just think _differently_,that's all."

Link beamed, brightly. "That's what Saria says. But she also says that she's different, too."

He was so happy that Navi had said to him that she didn't think he asked stupid questions. Maybe she really was his friend and fairy, like all the forest kids had. Imagine- the little outcast had a fairy! At least one good thing had come out of this strange quest.

"Hey, Navi," Link piped up again, "I think you might be a little different, too." He turned and smiled at her.

She felt guilty for secretly thinking his question stupid.

The pair crested the hill they were working on and Link noticed a huge stone edifice rising out of the twilight-kissed greens of the field.

"Look at that!" he said, completely enraptured. "Do you think we'll find a Princess of Destiny there?"

Navi knew what the stone wall surrounding the town was through the Great Deku Tree's lessons and stories of the outside world.

"Probably. That's where the people of Hyrule live, Link," she said, proud to be able to appear knowledgeable. "That water surrounding the wall is called a moat and that tower near the opening is called a guard tower. Some of the people stand on top of it to look for danger."

"Okay, what's _that_?" Link asked, giddily pointing to the chains attaching the bridge to the opening in the town walls.

"The drawbridge?" She specified.

"Yeah, that's what it looks like it should be called!" He threw his arms up in a display of happiness. "But why are they closing it?"

Indeed, Navi could hear the clinking of the chains as they were being drawn upwards and their path to the princess being taken with it.

"Well, Link, it's for protection."

"Protection from _what_?"

"The darkness, I believe."

"You mean," he paused, "It's always got the sunlight in there, like how the Kokiri Forest Meadow never goes completely dark?"

"No, I don't think that's quite right." She puzzled over the predicament as the twilight faded into something blacker. "The Great Deku Tree says that with the darkness comes monsters and the people here shut them out."

"Oh." Link looked around. "I don't see any monsters," he said. Suddenly, an idea occurred to him and his face twisted into a horrified mask.

"Navi, _are we monsters_?"

He said it with such terror that for a moment she suspected he had figured out something she hadn't, but she shook the thought away. She wasn't supposed to be thinking stupid thoughts.

"No, silly, it just means that--" the concept clicked in tandem with the drawbridge and the city walls. "--the monsters come out _at nightfall_."

"Like what the giant owl had been talking about?" Link meandered towards the closed drawbridge and off the beaten path, not comprehending.

"Link! Get back on the path!" Navi shrieked.

"I am- the way to where the princess is has got to be the path, right?"

"No, see the part that doesn't have grass? That's the path!"

Link felt foolish for assuming he had known what a path was. Meekly, he squinted at the ground to try to find what his fairy friend had been talking about.

"Navi, it's too dark to see anything. Can you, um, come over here so I can see what you mean?"

Navi was completely exasperated and very afraid.

"Just walk toward me. Right now. It's over here." She flew in giant semicircles in the air, trying to take his attention off of the ground.

"But, Navi, you came over here," he said, his eyes not leaving the ground. "Is their danger around? You turned a weird color…"

Link marveled for a moment at the red-orange glow blooming at his feet and was about to ask Navi how fairies managed to change color when he noticed a second, twin glow peering out right next to the first one. He knelt down and reached out to touch one.

An audible cracking of bone-on bone was heard as the earth around his feet was torn up and a skeletal hand tore out of the ground and gripped his.

In his surprise, Link fell backwards and his momentum took the monster's arm with him. He stared at it, wide-eyed, and noticed that it still had enough flesh to possess five long, broken, bloody fingernails.

"_Watch out!_" Navi screamed, rushing through the air over to Link. She swatted the broken arm off of him and cast a nervous yellow glow onto the immediate area surrounding them both. "Link, those are monsters! They're stalchildren!"

The little stalfos that Link had taken the arm off growled and clawed his way with its still-good arm to the surface.

It was a hunched-over, maimed little skeleton with orange-yellow eyes that burned holes into the darkness and illuminated the oversized, horribly mashed face and jagged, crooked teeth bent into it at painfully unnatural angles. Most noticeably, its spine was so bent that it would have made the comical silhouette of a baggage-weary peddler, but Link and Navi only knew enough to tell that its hips and legs, while unnaturally bent like under some great weight, were persistently moving towards them.

It cackled maniacally when Link tried to back off from his place on the ground and gave a little swat with its attached arm and only laughed more when it managed to nick Link's cheek. Its nails were surprisingly sharp.

Link scrambled backwards and tried to block the thing's next swipe with the limb he had already broken off, but the skeleton grabbed it and threw it to the side.

Navi flew around Link's head and tugged on the hilt of his sword. "Don't be afraid of the Stalchild! Just…attack!" She knew that her words were hypocritical, but she also knew that doing nothing was going to get them both killed.

With clumsy hands, Link took the hint and jabbed his sword around in hopes of hitting something. In a lucky swipe he managed to knock the creature's legs off, but that didn't deter its determination to get Link. It pulled itself forward, with one arm and one leg, still giving that sick smile.

Link jumped up to get off of its level and kicked its head off of its crooked neck, and watched its spine writhe. The vertebrae crunched as they moved against each other and it flipped over on its broken torso, the ribs somehow managing to move like little, spindly legs, and still going for Link.

The little Kokiri sword made five hurried jabs into the backbone before Link was sure it wasn't going to move anymore. He and Navi watched in sick fascination as the bone rotted into dirt before their very eyes.

The two of them stayed very quiet.

"Navi," Link whispered his voice barely audible, "Don't move. There are more."

She wanted to ask how he knew that, but before she could even buzz her wings, she heard the clatter of bone on wood and turned around to see Link jamming his shield into another monster's spine.

The skeleton wailed and she saw more eyes appear out of the ground, and a few hands, and feet, and heads, and arms started to make their way up.

Link finished slamming into the stalchildren closest to him (using his own hands, feet, sword, shield, and anything else that was available, his or otherwise) and screamed to Navi, "The path! Navi, go back to the _path_!"

Startled, she did as he said and flew over the ground and illuminated the closest part of the trodden earth she could.

"Here!"

Link pushed several stalchildren off with his shield and made a beeline for her yellow glow. He landed in a pile beneath her light and she noticed a few tears and scratches on the back of his tunic. Quickly, though, they were hidden as he rolled over and onto his knees, sword and shield in hand.

With a look of sheer terror on his face, he watched the little skeletal soldiers surround both he and his fairy partner.

"Link, if you don't do something, we'll die," Navi said, upset that she had to give such an ultimatum. He didn't answer, and they were soon surrounded completely.

The beady little eyes and the deformed bodies all stopped suddenly, like there was some unknown barrier surrounding the pair. They gave a few swipes and a few disappointed wails before finally, thankfully, they burrowed down into the earth one by one, leaving only their greedy eye sockets showing.

"I should have asked the owl more questions," Link muttered. Navi only blinked her light a few different colors in response.

They sat in silence for the rest of the night, countless orange lights burning into the darkness around them.

* * *

Okay, so I embellished a bit on the Stalchildren. So sue me (ACTUALLY, PLEASE DON'T I DON'T OWN THIS FRANCHISE.) And I'm really not that crazy about this chapter, but I kind need to know what y'all think- fanfic is great practice, y'know! Constructive, even blunt criticism is fine (Heck, so are flames! They're funny, often!)

And on another note, the reason for "HEAR No Evil" will become a little more apparent soon. Huzzah!


	7. Cacophony

His dream was the same as it usually was, with a dark form pursuing a white blur while the sky above him cried. It was so familiar that Link was genuinely surprised to see neither treetop nor yellow sky above him when he opened his eyes.

He sat up and pondered what this strange landscape was, with brilliant purples and pinks casting hues all over the bright green hills and poking out between the even bigger rises of land behind them. For a few moments he stayed completely still, utterly transfixed in the silent, serene scenery around him.

Then, there was a light birdsong from somewhere around him, like the tinkling of bells, and the spell was broken. Link remembered all about the Princess of Destiny and the Great Deku Tree, and he nervously fiddled with the little ocarina in his tunic. With a start, Link also remembered the little monsters that had come out of the ground around him the night before and he warily looked at the ground, but found nothing but the dew innocently sitting on the grass and reflecting the rising sun. The natural noise of the field had taken a crescendo to its normal busy and carefree melody, and, if he hadn't known better, Link never would have suspected anything as dangerous as an army of stalchildren was buried beneath his feet. He sighed and resigned himself to listening to the sounds of the world around him.

Finally, Link noticed that the drawbridge was down. He glanced around for Navi and found her asleep, nestled in his hat on the ground. He scooped her up and carefully put her onto his head, placing his hat over her to keep her secure and warm before hurriedly moving towards this new, strange, stone place. After all, he didn't know when night would come again and bring those monsters with it. Whatever was behind that wall was safer than anything else that might appear out here, he figured, so why not explore it a little?

He giddily walked over the bridge and onto the cobblestones, marveling at how many there were. He was so transfixed on the ground beneath his feet that he wasn't paying attention to what was in front of him and collided into the tallest boy he had ever seen. Link winced as he fell flat on his rear.

"Welcome to Castle Town," the boy said. He wore a pointy helmet and breastplate that looked like it was made of the same material Link's sword was-Mido had called it "metal". He also had a long "metal" stick that looked like it was made to stab monsters in the eye. Link couldn't help but stare.

"Is there something I can help you with?" The tall boy shifted nervously under Link's blue gaze.

Link, transfixed, continued to gape with his mouth open.

"Kid?"

"Why are you so tall?" The little Kokiri drew the words out slowly and languidly, as if to accentuate them with the characteristic he was asking about.

The tall metal-boy was completely taken off-guard by the question. "Because I eat my vegetables," he stammered out.

"How many vegetables?"

"Listen kid, do you need something?"

"I need to know how many vegetables you ate," Link stated, completely serious.

"What?"

"I need to know how you got so tall!"

"I'm, um, sure you'll find out when you grow up," The boy said, adjusting his grip on his metal eye-skewer.

"Grow up?" Link began to laugh uncontrollably. "Kokiri don't grow up! Everybody knows that!" The guard, completely taken aback by this strange child, nodded weakly as Link walked away with a smile still on his face.

Link couldn't help but ogle at all the strange buildings he saw and give shy waves to all the people he saw dressed in colorful, exotic clothing. He saw other metal people, too, and gave them more enthusiastic greetings. How could all these people dressed in such funny suits possibly be too shy to return his gestures? In his mind, there wasn't any risk of these people rejecting him because he was different (he thought he was the most normal person in the town), so he didn't hold back any of his wonderings or whims. He felt confident, and decided that confidence was something he liked.

When he spotted a magical rock that could spurt water, however, Link's train of thought was completely derailed and he rushed over to the stone wall and stuck his face over the side. He made some impressed coos and examined the rock in an effort to discover what was making the water move through it.

"What's wrong?" said a little girl's voice.

"Nothing," said the enraptured Kokiri. He didn't take his eyes off the enchanted stone. "It's _magic_."

"Oh, the fountain?"

He stuck his hands in the cool, clear liquid. "Is that what it's called?" Link turned his head to his informant.

"Yeah." She was a friendly-faced redheaded girl with a little yellow scarf tied around her throat. "Daddy says it's older than I am."

"Daddy?" This word was completely foreign to Link.

The little girl rocked on her toes and fixed him with her own stare.

"Hey, your clothes are different," she said. "I've never seen you before. You aren't from around here." Her tone was unintentionally rude, but Link didn't notice.

"I'm from the forest. I've got a fairy to prove it!" He proudly made a move for his hat so he could reveal Navi, but then thought better of it as he remembered that she was still sleeping.

"Oh," she said, her eyes getting wider. "You're a fairy boy?" When Link nodded, her eyes started to sparkle and she clapped her hands together.

"My name's Malon! My daddy owns Lon Lon Ranch!" she grinned. "I'm so happy to meet a fairy boy!"

Most of the concepts she threw out went completely over Link's capped head. He wanted to ask her what a "daddy" and a "ranch" and a "Lon Lon" were, but he suddenly remembered his real purpose in coming to Hyrule.

"What's a 'Princess of Destiny'?" he blundered.

Malon looked confused. "I don't know. But the castle has a princess. My daddy went there a while ago to deliver some milk, but he hasn't come back yet." She rocked back and forth on her toes. "Maybe if you find him he can tell you."

He was about to ask her what a castle looked like when a mad torrent of feathers zipped by his feet and a frantic girl, even smaller than he or Malon, shoved through them. As was the effect of the miracle rock before it, Link was immediately drawn to this new phenomenon and started chasing after the white feathered thing. He easily bypassed the other, tinier pursuer and dove into the plumage of the squawking animal.

The creature was obviously a bird, but not any kind of bird Link had ever seen before. It was much too big to be a dove, too ugly, and had these strange red dangling pieces hanging off of its beak and head. With an unpleasant crow, the bird moved its captured leg in frustration and managed to give its handler a few optimistically ignored scratches.

The miniature girl and Malon caught up to the child in green as he gawked at his prize.

"Hey! Why'd you catch my cucco? I was having fun chasing it!" Two itty bitty boots began to stomp on the uneven cobblestones. "Let it go!"

Link felt sheepish around this new child's commanding attitude. He had never seen anybody so little be so loud before and wondered if the girl's voice had grown like the tall boy in the metal suit's body, as if in some kind of trade-off. He wanted to ask her if she had gotten to choose which grew, body or sound, but the girl reminded him so much of Mido that he decided not to. Unceremoniously, he dropped the white bird on the ground and it scurried away in a flurry of feathers.

The tiny child's white and yellow dress hurried after it, but quickly came to a halt in front of a curtain of brightly-dressed tall people. The creature scuttled through, but the little girl wasn't so lucky. A few of the members of the crowd yelled angrily at her and shooed her off. When she persisted, a few of them gave her just enough attention to shout some very not-nice words (most of which were unknown to young Link) at her before giving her a shove in the opposite direction. The other two children watched as their littlest peer proceeded to use her big voice in reply to the big people.

As the enormous wails filled the cobblestone square, Malon expressed her sympathy with a little coo and rushed forward to comfort the tiny girl. Link just clamped his hands over his ears.

Eventually, the teeny one calmed down enough to allow herself to be guided over to the fountain where Link was still standing.

Malon was fixing her companion's white headscarf, which had loosened in all the excitement. "There, there," she said, "It'll all be okay. You can chase the cucco later."

The little girl's miniature features scrunched up even smaller, defying all things Link thought possible. "It's all _his_ fault that I can't chase it now!" A stubby, pointed digit accompanied her proclamation.

Her tone was incredibly accusatory, and the non-confrontational Link felt his earlier ebullience subsiding into shyness, even as Malon tried to make the little one stop shouting. As Link cast a nervous glance around the square, he noticed how many people were staring at him.

"I'm going to find a castle," he muttered, and scurried off in a manner that greatly resembled the ugly white bird's.

Of course, a man with a mass of fur dangling off of his chin was not the destination Link had in mind, but it was what he ran into.

"Whoa! Don't damage my beard, son!" The hairy man said, steadying the boy in green. "This is my pride and joy, you know!" He cracked a smile that was barely visible behind his thick brown facial hair.

Numbly, Link nodded and headed towards the closest door he saw. The man seemed nice, but Link was not feeling up to the challenge of staying out in the open with miniature Mido's eyes burning holes into his back.

He did not expect the inquisitive, purple orbs that found him on the other side of the doorway, nor the sharp brown ones that followed after. In fact, the whole experience had become an unexpected whirl of colors, sounds, sights, smells, and eyes, eyes, _eyes_ peering down and around at him, crushing him like the glare of condescending giants. Really, it was all the teensy-tiny girls' fault; she hadn't pointed Link out to the crowd, but had inadvertently pointed the crowd out to him.

He trembled a few moments under the weight of the big people's gazes, particularly the weird, violet-eyed, rock-bodied creature's.

"Hello," it sighed. "Are you here to buy some of the Goron's special crop?"

What an odd voice! It spilled from somewhere deep in the rock creature's body and splashed against the insides of its cavernous belly before finally evaporating out of its mouth in a thick gas that came in through the ears rather than the nose. It billowed and swirled about in the child's head, and Link could see himself surrounded by heat waves that warped the craggy mountain earth as if the very world around him were trembling.

The vision subsided as rapidly as it came, and the giant behind the counter (was Link at Ahzull's house?) shooed him away. "You're too young for bombs or big metal shields," he said, and Link nodded as if he understood and scampered off.

The bustling activity outside persisted, even as the terrified Link muddled through it in a pitiful search for a place free from accusations, peering eyes, and all the _noise_.

He ran through the back alleys until he finally found a place that was suitably quiet. Perhaps it was too quiet, as Navi chose the moment of silence to interject her own opinion.

"Hey! Link! You shouldn't have run into town without asking me first!" She shot out from under his cap. "That was really dangerous! What if something had happened to you and I wasn't able to warn you about it?"

Link sniffled and Navi noticed that he was close to tears. She softened. "Hey, now, listen. It's all okay now. You just calm down, and then we'll go back into town and ask where the castle is and find the princess." Link didn't look any more cheered. "The princess will help us, and everything won't be so scary."

"Come on, Link, please don't cry," she tried.

He kept staring into the reflection pool, like he could see past the giant stone building that lay on its placid surface. At first, Navi bombarded him with soothing ideas and questions, but she finally regressed into simply sitting by him and letting him compose himself like the water in the pool.

"That building is pretty," he eventually said, and he was right- it was an enormous sanctuary, with grandiose carvings lining its walls and towers, and a stout posture that could endure even the ravages of time. It kept a silent vigil, and Navi began to feel intimidated by its stoic aura.

"Do you want to go in?"

"No."

"Oh." Somewhere inside, she felt relieved. " Do you want to go back into the town?"

Wordlessly, silently, he got up and started in the direction of the town. Navi climbed into his hat and shivered.

So it's been awhile, huh?

Yeah, well, life's life, and I DID warn ya that this would be updated sporadically.

I didn't second-read this chapter heavily, so please point out any terrible nasty things that suck in this chapter, wouldya?


	8. Zelda's Lullaby

_Part Eight- Zelda's Lullaby_

He wasn't the only one who had been dreaming.

When Zelda had seen him first, he had been a simple figure bathed in light, and what a glorious light it was! It cleaved through the Evils of her sight and presented the key of salvation before her- a hero dressed in the green of the holy token that heralded his origins. Now he was here, close enough to reach out and touch. Was it possible that she was asleep still?

Link was surprised to find another child waiting for him in the depths of the huge fortress he had just snuck into, but his surprise turned to embarrassment when she began to laugh at him.

"Oh, please don't be so upset! I had prophesized about our meeting." For reasons he did not understand, Link's flustered fog immediately dissipated at her reassurance. This girl harbored absolutely no ill will- he felt like he knew her, but he didn't know why.

Still, he trusted her with his feelings immediately. "What is 'prophesized'?"

Navi, who had taken refuge in her child's hat, tugged on his hair in an effort to tell the boy that he was looking an ignorant fool.

Zelda only smiled. "A prophesy is a memory, only it shows the future and not the past."

Link thought hard about what she said. "A dream."

In reply, she turned her head to the side. "A special dream. But yes." Excitedly, she went on to describe the vividness of her vision, how the forest must have sent him as a blessed emissary, and then backed up and remembered her manners. "I'm Zelda, Princess of Hyrule," she told him. "What is your name?"

"Link." He answered immediately and with no hesitation. This girl was not only the princess he had been searching for, but she made him feel compelled to answer, do, and be anything she asked of him. In fact, it was a feeling not unlike the one Saria had inspired within him and that alone made Zelda even dearer.

As it turned out, the sudden trust was mutual- Zelda could swear that she had heard the forest boy's uncommon name before and she became even fonder of him than she had been already. She smiled and told him the great secret of the goddesses' Triforce. "Please keep this a secret from everyone," she warned.

A secret from everyone. _A secret to everybody._ Link felt a tug on his chest as he thought of Shad.

"If someone with a righteous heart makes a wish, it will lead Hyrule to a golden age of prosperity. But if someone with an evil mind has his wish granted, the world will be consumed by evil…"

_A secret to everybody._ The words kept playing in his ears.

"But the sages built the Temple of Time to protect the Triforce from evil."

Link saw the scary building from Castle Town in his mind's eye. He shivered as he thought of how eerie the place was- he could easily believe Zelda when she said that it housed a Sacred Realm. The giant, tomblike structure had managed to still all of the life around it and bury it within itself. Soundless, merciless, pitiless, ethereal- Link couldn't understand why anyone would ever dare try and open whatever doors lay within simply because it was so ominous.

However, as Zelda informed him how one could conceivably enter the deepest chambers of the eternal temple, he knew that was exactly what he was going to inevitably do. The words in his head grew louder- _a secret to everybody._

The princess looked at him in concern. "Did you understand well what I just told you?"

"Um, yes," he replied, and Link wasn't lying.

She smiled at him again, but the glow quickly drained from her face as she gestured to the window behind her. "I forgot to tell you. The other element from my dream- the dark clouds- I think they symbolize _this man_…"

Although he stood half a head shorter than Zelda, Link could easily see through to the next room. A lush hallway filled the glass in the window frame, with purple fabric adorning the walls and the gilded soldiers standing at attention. Their attention was not on Link, however, and neither was the forest child's on them- the black boots that cast a menacing shadow onto the rich carpet eclipsed the rest of the world from every onlooker as they carried their wearer forward.

The boot became a leg, the leg became a body, and the body became a man. He did not present himself in the finery of a king, but Link automatically knew that was what this man was- he carried himself with a power no mere human could command, and he did it even though the leather and metal clothes he wore were constructed in such a way as to hide the slightness of his body caused by famine and dehydration. The ragged fabric fluttering off his back and wrists was torn and yellowed with age and something else that Link could only identify as the remnants of bloodstains. He was a leader, a warrior, and a merciless creature with a hungry demeanor like a coyote.

The metal studs on his gloves and shoes gave the effect of outstretched claws, like he was ready to strike at any moment.

Ganondorf, as Zelda had labeled him, did not even attempt to conceal his nature through his dress even in the court of a monarch and his physical features only added to his sinister image. In fact, the Gerudo King looked like a creature of legend with his fiery hair and dark grey skin- neither his locks nor his complexion were an ordinary color by themselves, but even if they hadn't been so outstanding, the two traits would not go together. The impossible impression was both stunning and unforgettable.

Was he a beast? Was he a monster? Was he a man? Was he a demon? Link was fascinated. He absorbed this man's shadowy presence and ignored Zelda's comments on him. There was something familiar about the dark man, but in a way that wasn't quite the same as the closeness of the girl beside him…

Suddenly, Link discovered that he had not even seen what was most haunting about the Gerudo Leader. With a swing of his earrings, three gleaming orbs found their way right into the child's soul and Link was bewitched by the flames within.

The highest pit of fire in the man's face was really the great gemstone that fell between his brows, and Link knew it, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that the ornament was not a piece of jewelry, but a third eye, a larger window to Ganondorf's hellacious soul. What was this man, really?

In the split second that their eyes met, Link swore that the voice in his head did not belong to his inner consciousness but to the man behind the window. _"A secret to everybody,"_ it sneered.

Link backed off.

"Did he see you?" Zelda squeaked, and the look on Link's face told her all she needed to know. "Don't worry. He doesn't know what we are planning…yet!" Her gleaming teeth should have inspired confidence, but Link's returning grin was very half-hearted.

_A secret to everybody. _It wasn't Ganondorf's voice this time, but Shad's once more. He gave another fleeting glance to the windowpane- something didn't feel right. Zelda's reflection looked distorted, like the glass had been thrown on the ground and shattered. _Even the best laid plans go awry,_ he thought.

Zelda mistakenly took Link's unsettlement as confusion over her plan. "Let's get the Triforce before Ganondorf does!" She swooped in towards the shorter conspirator. "I will protect the ocarina of time with all my power! He shall not have it!" Then, excitedly, she stretched out her arm. "You go find the other two Spiritual Stones!"

Hurriedly, she scrawled out something on a piece of paper and gave it to him. "This will come in handy, I just know it."

Link fingered the paper and looked uncomprehendingly at the words inside. "You should leave before the guards notice you," she urged, but not impolitely.

As obedient as any soldier, Link hurried off to obey her decree. The soothing lullaby of the courtyard and the stream faded back in and he began to feel soothed again. What it was about this little paradise in the castle, Link didn't know, but the air here gave him a calm feeling much like Zelda herself did. He banished all of his doubts about his mission and tucked her letter into his shirt. He'd ask Navi what it said later, when they were outside.

With his mind made up, he made to leave through the way he came in but stopped under the red gaze of the most commanding woman he had ever seen.

The color of her eyes may have been menacing, but Link felt safe within them. She called herself Impa, the nursemaid (what that was, Link had no idea), and bid Link in an unfittingly kind tone to play a song with her.

"It was my role to teach a song to the Royal messenger," she gave an almost imperceptible smile. "This song has a strange sort of power," she added.

Before Link could consider bombarding her with questions, Impa proved the song's mystique to be potent indeed, for when he heard it, the boy forgot everything.

The melody represented everything Zelda and this place was- he couldn't explain it- it didn't have the complexities of the real composition, but it was louder than the buzzing of the bees and rustling of the leaves because it was _real music_ and not just the noises that melded together inside him. Link heard music everywhere.

He had often thought about trying to put down the feeling in the air around him in words when he was alone and others couldn't call him crazy or stupid. It had been his secret until Saria snuck up on him by accident while he was talking to his reflection about how to express sounds in words.

Only Saria knew that Link could hear music in everything, and that was why she had shown him her secret hideaway- and taught him to play the ocarina. In fact, she was the one who told him that words would never be able to hold the true power of what he wanted to express but that one day Link's ocarina could.

He knew what she had meant now.

The melody that Impa played was perfectly crafted to simplify what it represented and accurately depict its subject while still maintaining most of the meaning.

Had he a better grasp on the written language, Link would have said that Zelda's Lullaby was like music's equivalent to finding the single most precise word to encapsulate the otherwise indescribable, condensing an idea into a symbol everyone could understand.

Bliss.

Peace.

Maybe even a glimpse at a form of love.

He was so entranced that he didn't feel the emptiness in his chest when he pulled out the fairy ocarina his best friend had given him when he left and blew into it. He didn't think or feel anything, he just did.

Impa was surprised that the boy could play back the song after only hearing it once- and she was a little unnerved when he correctly continued the melody past what she had played for him.

He played it like he had learned it long before, like he really knew the feeling it conveyed.

It was beautiful.

When Link opened his blue eyes, Impa knew that his performance had a strong effect on him as well. He was in a daze and she knew that he wouldn't be able to understand anything she told him until he was out of the castle.

She put away her flute and led him by the hand outside of the palace. This boy was special, there was no doubt about it- he was worthy enough to traverse Death Mountain and more. Impa could feel it.

* * *

Super duper sporadic update GO! I was really dreading this chapter 'cause it's just big ol' foreshadowing and research on in-game dialogue UGH. It went soooo sloooooooow, but I got to write some Ganondorf! YEAH!

Anyway, I was so distracted by my Durarara! fanfiction that I almost forgot about this one. DERP. Also, rereading the other chapters, I'm probably gonna reupload 'em cause they aren't so good. I not only sporadically update, but I sporadically clean. Maybe I should get a Beta. Whatever.

Thanks for stoppin' by- please read and review and point out any atrociois style and typo issues!


	9. Liars

_Part Nine- Liars_

He didn't always dream of the dark landscape, at least not in every slumbering moment, but the dream of dark and light horses would still loom on the edges of his other visions, waiting eagerly to invade whatever else he was seeing in his mind's eye. It was always there in some way, whether as constant dark clouds on the corner of his new, blue dream-sky or as a faraway rumbling of violent weather, daring to break through and take over.

Tonight, he saw Saria and the Forest. She smiled at him and held out her hand. Suddenly, the rain began to fall from above. To a Kokiri, something like rain was highly unnatural- it did not rain in the Woods. When he looked to his surroundings again, though, he discovered he was not in the Woods at all, but in a field- it was the field he'd crossed to find Zelda, he knew now- and then he saw the princess and Impa rush by on the white horse, and then…

Hellfire. Ganondorf engulfed him in his eyes with that burning desire and Link woke up before he was incinerated.

He now knew what the vision meant and he was so glad that he had made a plan with Zelda to keep such a terrible dream from coming true. Link smiled to himself and went back to sleep, thinking that even if the dream still invaded his resting mind, it would serve as a congratulatory reminder that such an event would never happen instead of a prophesy of despair. Contented, he adjusted his hat over Navi and went back to sleep on the soft mattress.

Still, in his heart, he had doubts. He prayed he would never have to fall victim to such hungry eyes.

Again he drifted off, and this time had visions of a deep, dark place- and hands, and teeth, and the dead. And hands, and teeth, and the dead. And hands, and teeth, and the dead- and hands, and hands, and hands, hands, hands, death, hands, hands, _such cold, dead hands_ with a hunger that was not that of Ganondorf, no, it was not a want for things of the flesh, but for something more, more, _more-_ something that could not be put into words.

Something that could not be put into music.

This thing, whatever it was, ravenously sucked the very being out of the world around it and

there

was

nothing

left.

Absolute silence like the Woods, except where the Woods kept the hoot of the owls, the croak of the frogs, or the chirp of the crickets, this kept not a sound; it was a void, an absolute gaping wound in the world where something had been taken and the lacking itself was tainted.

Was there no music? No magic? No life? Yes, those things were all gone, but there was something _more_ that was missing, something much more important—

Then, he was going backwards through the stony tunnel and away from the long, grasping hands and gnashing teeth, like time was reversing. He saw a big, red stain on the floor beneath his retreating feet and he felt sick.

As his body heaved from gagging, time suddenly moved _forwards_ and threw him onto the bloody X on the floor. Instead of hard stone, his knee hit nothing; he went through it and he felt the emptiness, the sheer _lack_, swallow him whole and he saw himself falling further and further down into the abyss. The stained floor had looked like it had substance, but it was an illusion. Reality in the dark dreamworld had unknown rules and he did not know if the endless darkness he was plummeting into would encapsulate him forever or if the ground would come and end everything.

He stopped falling to come face-to-face with _those teeth_ and those cold, rotting fingers gripped him again, and he blanched at the sensation of it all.

This hunger that the _thing_ with the many hands and teeth felt in this deep, dark, dank hole wasn't for earthly things, but for something so much more that Link had. It didn't want music or magic or even life or love.

What was it that Link possessed that was so precious?

He listened closely to this terrifying thing as its neck just extended out more and more, past the point of the physically possible, until he could see the rotting flesh gathered upon its sinews tear from being stretched so far. Link coolly realized that he was no longer on the other end of the thing's teeth, but was watching it devour another person from a distance, like he was not part of the scene.

The creature held its victim's face in its jaws and he did nothing to stop it.

He heard its jaw shut in tandem with a clap of thunder and its pale, fleshy, undead neck became the healthy, muscular, and live one of a white horse carrying a princess and nursemaid on its back.

Link awoke again with the image of Ganondorf's eyes boring into his mind's eye. A tinkling of bells and a crowing sounded somewhere in the distance to herald the sun's arrival and Link needed no other goading to make him happily abandon his dreams and greet it.

He sat up in the bed and let his arms extend to their full length before slipping out of the covers and putting on his hat.

"Good morning!" said a voice. Link did not truly know what morning was, but he returned the greeting and came downstairs, with Navi immediately stirring and darting under his green hat.

The previous day, Link travelled to Kakariko Village on Impa's instruction and was immediately captivated by a white cucco clucking by the entrance. He, with all the care a young child who didn't want to scare a feathered friend could, picked up the bird and carried it around high above his head for any miniature girls in bright yellow that might be lurking around to see and claim. He walked around the little town like that for some time (It was small compared to Castle Town, but Link still thought it was huge) and then he found, wonder of wonders, another white bird- and then another! They were everywhere!

Link hauled his feathery passenger (who had calmed down and happily sat on his head after a while) around until a young woman with hair the color of strawberries stopped him and claimed the cuckoo.

"I keep them as pets, but they give me such horrible allergies!" she said.

Link looked up at the bird. "What's an 'allergy'?"

"I get goosebumps, no, cucco bumps!"

Link held out the bird to her, which made her panic a little. "Can you make it give you one? I want to see what it is."

At the closeness of her pet, the lady wrinkled her face up into an expression of distaste. "No!" she shouted, and the nastiness that she said it in contrasted sharply with the innocent inflection of her previous comments.

"Oh." Link held the bird to himself again and it calmed down. "Can you make it give me one, then?"

She looked at him with her big, blue eyes. "If you aren't allergic, you can't get them. When I touch them, I get little bumps all over my skin. It's terrible."

"Why?"

"Because I'm allergic, that's why."

"But _why_?" In his hat, Navi smacked him for being rude.

"I don't know why! It's just that way. I can't help it."

Link began to wince as his fairy proceeded to pull on his hair. He got the hint and just settled for saying, "Oh," once more instead of inquiring further. The redheaded lady again blinked her bright eyes again and cocked her head to the side in a coquettish fashion.

"Will you please find my cuccos and put them in that pen over there?" She sent her gaze to a little fenced-in area that was crammed beneath the side of a crooked house built onto the edge of a small cliff, like a continuation of the jagged earth.

"Link," whispered Navi, "You should help her since you've been so obnoxious."

Link would have given her a hand anyway, but he was glad that Navi wanted to help her, too. He was also pleased that he had agreed to do it- running after the things was lots of fun and he got to learn so many things, like that cuccos could fly short distances and take you with them.

"I'm just like you, Navi!" he said as he fluttered in midair with the help of a frantic fowl.

"Oh, really?" she said, exiting his hat to hover alongside him. With a mischievous laugh, she darted forward and did several loop-de-loops in midair. "Can you do that?"

"No," replied Link, "But why would I want to? I'd get sick!"

Navi gave another gleeful response and playfully tugged on his ear before sneaking back under his green cap. Perhaps this boy wasn't as foolhardy as she thought- any other child would have tried her little stunt and fallen on their rears just hard enough to learn their lesson. Link's incessant questions weren't mindless, either- he always had a reason to ask and he almost always out whatever he learned to good use. He was an oddball.

Despite his perceptiveness and foresight, however, Navi knew that Link was still a child and needed guidance.

And had you asked him, Link would have wholeheartedly agreed with her.

He dropped the last snowy white cucco into the redheaded lady's pen. She gave a warm smile. "Thank you for finding my cuccos!" Link nervously nodded back at her and scuffed his feet.

"You're welcome," he muttered. "Sorry about your goosebumps."

She waved the problem away. "Here, I'll give you this. It's fine glass and I think you'll get a lot of use out of it."

Young Link almost had a heart attack when he saw the glass bottle in her hands. Was she a fairy-catcher? His left hand shot up to his hat to guard the little passenger within it. "What do you do with it?"

The lady didn't notice the accusing tone of his question, or if she did, she ignored it. "Why, you put things in it, silly!"

"What kind of things?"

"You silly goose! Anything you want! Water, bugs, juice, um," with a quirk of her head, she tried to think of other things a boy might like to do with a bottle. "I guess you could put a candle in there to make a lantern, if you wanted."

Link wasn't done with her. "Do you use it to catch fairies?"

His serious tone and stony face coupled with his subject matter made the lady erupt into a fit of giggles. "No, I certainly don't! But I guess you could if you wanted to!"

Beneath the cover of Link's green hat, Navi released her grip on Link's wild hair. Most Hylian adults did not believe in fairies- and the fairies strove to keep it that way. To the fey folk, nonbelievers weren't a danger. It was the faithful adults that caused problems. True, there were benign and worthy ones in the world, but the risk of encountering a bitter, greedy, and cruel fairy catcher was too great for creatures like Navi to show themselves to just anyone; fairies only appeared to those they deemed safe.

This is part of the reason why only children can become Kokiri. However, it should be noted that not all children are found and chosen- the unlucky souls that could not prove their inner goodness before the Woods claimed them were warped into Skullchildren.

Link didn't fully understand this, but this girl's reaction proved to him that she was not a threat. Link nodded at her. "Okay. You shouldn't catch them unless they want to be caught."

She stifled her amusement as best she could. "I see."

Navi hurriedly whispered that Link should thank her.

"Oh! Right!" He said brightly. Navi tugged on his hair to make him be quiet, but the girl hadn't noticed his lapse in judgment because she was too busy smothering her laughter. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she breathed. After a few sighs and stray chuckles, she asked Link a few questions of her own. "Where are your Mother and Father? Are you travelling? I can tell you aren't from around here."

Images of the Great Deku Tree came to mind and fluttered in Link's head like the dry leaves that had fallen from his branches when he'd left.

"My Father is dead," he said. Link didn't care that Mido didn't think he was a true child of the forest. He would always consider the Forest Guardian his father.

He hadn't the time to ask what in the world a "Mother" was before he was drowned out by the redhead's cooing. "You poor dear! Do you have anywhere to go?"

"Yes."

"Where, sweetheart?"

"I don't know."

The girl looked aghast. "What do you mean you have somewhere to go but you don't know where it is?"

"Well," Link began, "I'm looking for something. Something really special. But I don't know where it is. I'm going to find where I'm going!" He looked her straight in the eye when he said it- to him, there wasn't anything unusual about what he was doing.

The lady found him very odd, but he wasn't insincere. On the contrary, he was the very picture of blind innocence and honesty and she immediately felt compelled to take care of him. "Why don't you stay with us for the night and try to find what you are looking for tomorrow?"

Link, still unsure of the concept of day and night, furrowed his eyebrows. "Tomorrow?"

"You poor dear, night will be coming soon. You can't stay out here in the dark and cold!"

Navi gripped her young charge's scalp as he gritted his teeth. Night's darkness was one challenge they did not want to face without shelter.

"I would like that very much. Yes please!"

She took him by the hand up to the house that was sitting upon the craggy hill that overlooked the cucco pen. "My name is Repa. What is your name?"

"Link," he said. He noticed that she didn't seem bothered by the cucco feathers that had stuck to his hands, but he didn't want Navi to start using his hair to reign in his bad manners again. He wisely kept his mouth shut.

They climbed up the uneven stairs to the main part of the house, which was even larger than Link had previously thought. The red tiles on the roof and matching coloration on the shutters were brighter than any flower Link had ever seen. With his nose upturned and his mouth agape, he looked like a codfish.

"I'm going to fix dinner. Do you want to help?"

"Is it broken?"

Miss Repa laughed at him and brought him inside to spend the night, and that was how Link eventually found himself sitting across from her for breakfast- they were having leftover cucco from last night.

As with Link's allergen-laden hands from the day before, Miss Repa had prepared that bird without any signs of irritation or bumps. Again, Link didn't say anything (especially since the man living with Miss Repa had _insisted_ that the girl had horrible allergies and should be treated with the utmost respect), but he was curious.

He thanked them for the meal and left their big house all alone on the rocky hill.

"Navi," he said to her when she exited his hat, "I don't think that Miss Repa had allergens."

"Aller_gies,_ you mean. I don't think she had them either."

Link was aghast. "But why would she lie?" He was very puzzled and hurt. "The Kokiri would lie to me so they could pull pranks on me, but I think Miss Repa actually liked me. She fed me and gave me a nice bed."

Poor guardian Navi didn't want to answer such a hard question like this; the reasons people lie are vast and various and the answer would really upset her companion. Given the magnitude of their mission and surroundings, though, she knew Link needed to face some hard truths.

"Link, people lie for a lot of reasons. I think she lied because she didn't want to have to go find her cuccos herself. She manipulated you into doing it."

"Why didn't she just ask me to do it without that silly story?"

"Because then you might've refused."

"But I would have said yes."

"She didn't know that."

"So she wanted to trick me into doing something?"

"Yes."

"So that's what 'manipulate' means."

Navi was stunned at his deduction. "Kind of, yes." She wasn't sure if she should praise his clever reasoning or try to comfort him first, but the next words out of his mouth told her to keep quiet.

"A lot of people are going to lie to me to manipulate me to do whatever they want to do even if I don't want to do it, aren't they?" He thought about Zelda. "I don't think Zelda was lying. I am going to trust her and I am going to trust Saria and," he looked at his little blue fairy, "I am going to trust you."

Navi prayed that he could trust her enough to know that any lie she told him was for his own protection. She quietly prayed to the Goddesses as the pair explored Kakariko Village.

* * *

Beneath the Well is, like, one of my favorite parts of this game now that I'm older. There's something fascinaing about the TYPE of terror it inspires. I hate horror and torture movies, but I like the idea of it as a backdrop for characters like Link... if you've played Majora's Mask, you know what I mean even more... Link has this uncanny ability to work alongside/conquer/control darkness in a way that eludes most silent, "righteous" protagonists. That idea is the main (eventual) purpose behind these snippets- Link the child was raised in a deceptively tricky and dark environment and he "grows up" (relative to maturity rather than physical growth, y'know) to go to Termina and (literally and figuratively) masquerade as whatever he needs/wants to be as well as manipulate any event that happens in a span of three days. He is given a tremendous power that, if used correctly, could make him more of a god than Ganondorf could ever hope to be- and in my mind, Link'd be a trickster, of all things!

I personify each Link differently, but this particular Link has always been my favorite because I've always viewed him as a figure that parallels Ganondorf more so than Zelda, except where the former succumbed to the seduction of power Link kept a firm love for others- he's still a "Hero of Light(okay, time, whatever! XD)!" figure but he (eventually) uses sinister and dark magic/methods to reach his ends. He's also got much more tranquil fury than most of the other Links- and even when that subsides into bitterness, he's still sympathetic to others.

He's enigmatic. That's what I'm trying to say, I think. Eventually I may just tell everything from his point of view (because he is so fascinating), but as part of the trick of the fic I've got to let him grow up a little. He's still very young and impressionable right now!

Anyway, thank you for reading and don't forget to review! I really appreciate you guys! Thanks so much!


	10. One Step at a Time

_Part Ten- One Step at a Time_

When Link made it to the foot of the mountain, the guard at its gates looked at him and laughed. "What kind of funny game is our princess playing now?" he said as Link pulled out the letter Zelda had given him. Navi winced from within his hat as she noticed that her charge, a child of the forest who had left home before he was truly literate, handed the note to the guard upside-down and earned himself a second chuckle from him.

"So you wanna go up this mountain, huh?"

Link's eyes darted from the guard's mirthful ones and followed the crags of the mountain up to its peak. "I do not know if I _want_ to go up that mountain," he split apart the last word and formed the two halves like a cow chewing cud, leaving out the central "n" so each syllable was its own word, "but I know that I am going to."

The guard didn't even notice Link's pronunciation. He was too preoccupied with the note Link had placed in his hands. "This is definitely her handwriting," the guard muttered, his expression growing troubled. "Are you… are you sure you want to do this?"

"I told you," Link insisted, "I'm not sure I _want_ to, but I am going to. Will you please open this gate?"

The guard gave Link and the note another once-over before tucking both his lips into his mouth. "Okay, okay. You can go now. Just be careful, Mr. Hero." He added a quieter, "I've heard about kids growing up fast, but this…" and shook his head. Still, he thrust the butt end of his spear into a small grove in the ground and the gate separating the mountain from Kakariko opened.

Ever amicable to these mysterious tall strangers, Link dipped his head in thanks and started up the dirt path.

"Oh, by the way," the guard called to him, furrowing his brows, "If you're going to climb Death Mountain, you should have a proper shield. It is an active volcano, y'know."

Link blinked. "What's wrong with my shield?"

Mido's sneering face bubbled to the top of his mind and yelped, "You can't see the Great Deku tree without a sword and shield! Yeesh," and Link couldn't help but wonder if having a nice shield was some kind of universal requirement for going to meet one's "destiny", whatever that was. He still hadn't figured that out quite yet.

"It's made of wood and it-" the guard grimaced in frustration as Link looked even more perplexed. His entire posture deflated as he reached into himself to find what to say and then straightened back out when he found it. "If you go back to the Hyrule Castle Town market, check out the Bazaar. They have the shield you want there. Tell them I sent you! It'll get you a special discount!"

Link pursed his lips. "Maybe I will look at it the next time I am back there. I think this shield will be just fine for me. It's special." He absentmindedly reached his hand up behind him to graze the rough edges of bark on the surface of the shield. The wood itself was magic; it was still alive and infused with the life of the forest and Link felt a connection with it. It was a little bit of the forest to take with him wherever he went. The fact he'd only had it for a few days was irrelevant- _time_ was irrelevant in regards to his affections.

The guard mimicked Link's dubious face and shrugged. "If you think you're good to go, I won't stop you. I'm just worried, see. I've got a kid back home and he isn't much younger than you are. I see him a little in you. In fact," he moved a hand to his hip and gripped his spear nervously. "I have a favor to ask of you."

"How can you have a kid back home? You can't own them," Link interrupted. "Besides, aren't you a kid, too? That isn't fair," he decided.

Navi tugged on his hair.

For a second, the guard looked like he might drop his spear in surprise, but he snatched it back up in a hearty bellow of laughter. "I've been told I look young, but that's pushing it! Wahahaha!" his laughs petered off into chuckles and he wiped at his eyes. "No, I have a son. And this favor of mine involves him. You don't have to do it because of the advice I gave you about the shield," he quickly added, "I'm just asking."

Intrigued, Link put his hands on his hips and planted his feet.

"Have you been to the Happy Mask shop that just opened in the Hyrule Castle Town Market?"

"The what?"

"Everyone is talking about it!" the man said. Navi could tell that he was trying to pique Link's interest so he wouldn't pursue continuing up the mountain. The man seemed kind and protective. She considered showing herself and explaining the situation, but thought better of it. No matter how kind he was, this guard was still a human adult and she couldn't trust him.

As for Link, he was too preoccupied with remembering what the colorful Castle Town squares and shops looked like to even consider any deception, benign or otherwise. "Okay," he said, still mapping it out in his head.

"My little boy pesters me for a popular mask, but I don't have time to go there…" the guard gave a dramatic sigh.

"What's the favor?" Link blurted, annoyed that he couldn't remember anything about a "Happy Mask Shop".

The guard scowled. He didn't like being disturbed from his mask daydream and Navi suspected that he wanted a mask as much for himself as his son; he was a child at heart. "So, could you go and get the mask for me the next time you're in the market? If you feel like it. I'd go myself, but… well, I have no choice. This is my job," the guard withered.

"Why don't you have a choice?" Link asked.

"Because I'm a grown-up," he said. "Grown-ups have to do their jobs so they can get paid and then take care of their kids. Kids like you," he said, smiling.

Link, meanwhile, was puzzled. "Grown-up? What do you mean? A grown-up what?"

Navi dug her tiny fingers into Link's scalp. Hard. The boy whimpered in surprise but stood his ground, unsure of what she wanted him to do.

"I'm a grown-up person, kid! I'm an _adult_! What did you think I was?" He shook his head. " Aw, forget it! I dunno why you have a letter from her highness, but I can't let you pass. You're way too naïve for me to believe that this is anything more than a game."

"…_Adult?"_ Link whispered to himself.

"Yeah! We're the big people! So trust me. That's what I'm here for."

Navi's sharp pricks into her charge's head grew more frequent and intense and they fueled Link's fear like sharp pokers agitating the wood in a fire. The guard took a step closer and Link fled up the mountain as fast as he could, kicking up the dirt behind him.

The flustered guard hadn't expected the boy to bolt and he stumbled after him. "Hey, wait! It's dangerous!" he called, clanking and clattering as he hauled himself and his armor across the ascending, rocky terrain.

Terrified, Link didn't even look back. He fought gravity as he scrambled uphill, crawling and scraping himself across the red, wrathful earth when he lost his footing and collided with it face-first.

Navi leapt from his hat and led him to the path of least resistance with her calming light. The two of them kept climbing until the adult guard could neither be seen nor heard. Repa, Kakariko, and all its inhabitants were left far behind in the valley below.

"They're adults," Link whispered, slowing down to an exhausted trudge. "The big people. They're all adults," he choked.

"But they were very nice about it," Navi pointed out. "I don't think they are going to treat you like the mean ones in the stories."

"But what about you?" the boy gasped out. It was much harder for him to walk uphill than it was for Navi to fly and his earlier pell-mell pace hadn't eased the burden any. Link's heart had already begun beating faster from fear.

"What about me?"

"You don't show yourself to them," Link pointed out. She winced. "If they aren't nice to fairies, then I can't trust them, either! And you heard what Zelda said," he continued. "Her father- fathers in _this_ place must mean the adults that own 'em- he won't listen to her. And that man in all black that I saw in the window… he was an adult, too. I think." He shivered.

"Not all adults are truly evil," Navi tried.

"I know that! But that doesn't mean I can _trust_ them!" Link shouted over her, still shuddering despite the dry mountain heat. "Those are two very different things, Navi!" He clenched his fists, held them at his sides, and stared at his shoes. Then he sat down on a nearby rock. "…'m sorry," he added lamely. "It wasn't nice of me to yell at you just because you were trying to be nice and…"a hiccup slipped from his lips. "…didn't know."

"It's alright," the surprised fairy told him, nervously fluttering closer. "But what didn't I know?"

"Well, maybe you know, but maybe you just didn't know that I know," the boy said, wiping his damp, sweat-and-clay covered hands on his green tunic. His palms and fingers left shaky red smears on his tunic from nature's mountain finger paint. "You can't always trust things that are different and it doesn't matter if you are good or bad," he huffed, clasping his dried hands in his lap to try and keep them still.

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody," Link said. "They didn't need to. I figured it out. Not many Kokiri trust me because I didn't have a fairy, and that's why. I'm not evil. At least, I don't think I am and neither do they. They may not all like me, but they've never thought I was evil, so I know that couldn't be why they never trusted me. They just didn't trust me because they didn't know if I could be trusted!"

It was all very confusing to the fairy and she didn't understand. "But Link, now you have a fairy and you are just like them, and-"

"Navi," he said, voice cracking even more, "we left the forest. I know fairies can do that, but real Kokiri- _real_ ones- can't." his bottom lip twitched, but he held it still. Slowly, he held out his hands for Navi to perch within. "And I wasn't trustworthy," he hushed, closing his eyes.

"What?" Navi fluttered behind his hands instead and gently closed his palms back together with her own tiny ones. "What do you mean?"

Pinpricks of water appeared in the corner of Link's eyes. "They might think _I killed him_," he choked. "And now there are all these adults! And I'm a- a-" he shuddered and sniffed. "I want to go home!" he told her, in hysterics. "I want to wake up and tell Saria that this was another dream. I want Fath—the Great Deku Tree to tell me it was just a nightmare! But I can't! I'm not one of them and they can't- they _shouldn't_- ever trust me!" His voice cracked as his tears flowed. "I though all adults were mean but they are being nice to me and I don't know what that means! I can't run away because I have nowhere to go!" He released the inhuman moan of a crying child from sorrow. It was a sound that reverberated from within the empty places in his heart.

Fluttering up to his head, Navi did her best to shush the boy. "It's alright," she told him. "Everything is new and scary for you and bad things have happened," she tried. "But think of the good things that have happened, too. Those girls in the market were nice!" The ranch girl's smiling face was the first positive thing Navi could think of and she clung to it.

"I sh- shouldn'- I- I- I shouldn't cry," Link stated. "I must deserve," he let in a shaky breath, "this. B-because I was… I- I was always too diff'rent."

"No, that can't be it. You've done nothing wrong, Link. Please don't cry."

"I'm trying!" he shouted, jumping up from the rocky ridge he was sitting on and slamming his boots into the ground. "I want to stop. B-but I can't… I can't…" he stopped talking and let his uneven breathing speak for him.

However, Navi wasn't the only one to hear Link's grief. A quiet scuffle, not unlike the sound the brush makes when it scratches the roughness of the dry stone earth, etched itself into the fairy and her charge's ears. Navi felt her body begin to swell and a sickly yellow glow erupted from within her. "Link, something is coming," she told him, flying above his head to scout the area. I don't know what it is for sure, but I think it might be-"

A high-pitched squeal tore through the mountainside as a red blur streaked across the open air and plucked her from the sky. She shrieked as she felt sharp mandibles grip her body and shot downwards on instinct, wriggled out of the pincers' grip and away from the mouth they encircled.

She pirouetted in a wide berth away from the creature and back to Link. He had frozen in his shoes and stood gaping, defenseless, at the unexpected attacker.

It must have come from the rocky façade behind them, lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike. It tilted around on its legs from side to side- presumably looking for the fairy it had previously captured- before it settled itself out and turned in slow, exaggerated twitches to look behind itself and at Link in search of its escaped catch.

It was earthen red- a red tektite, the mountain's spider-crab, Navi remembered- with four bright, furry green legs like muscular caterpillars erupting from its underside. One big, wet, scarlet eye quivered above its mandibles. It was a simple creature and not one of evil magic's creation; the only thing it was after was food. Still, it was dangerous and Navi urged Link to draw his sword in case the tektite charged them.

The boy looked pitiful, with snot and tears running down his face as to make it look like he'd just been in the middle of a rain shower. He shivered. He suddenly felt cold. Only his reflection looked back at him from the gelatinous ruby pressed into the mountain creature's insectoid face and his head felt like it was swimming within its confines along with it.

The spider queen Gohma had once captured him in her one-eyed glare, too. Link was paralyzed.

The tektite wiggled its eyeball around and leaned forward, chittering in confusion about what to do about Link. The tektite was accustomed to hunting in a pack of two or three when it wasn't scavenging for smaller game, but the boy seemed much more docile than most other things its size. The tektite kept itself perfectly still as it considered its options.

Navi was afraid to make any sudden movements and goad the creature into leaping to action. "Don't make any sudden movements," she whispered "and watch it as it jumps. If you roll out of the way as it moves, you can attack it from behind." A tektite, while accustomed to sensing the vibrations of the earth as its predominant means to find prey, never leapt where it could not see. If Link moved out of the range of its singular eye, he would have it at his mercy.

But Link couldn't even hear her. He couldn't even think. The only thing he could see was his own face looking back at him from within the mountain spider's eye.

The tektite, on the other hand, squealed decisively and began to bounce on its haunches. It was hungry.

That surely would have been the end of both boy and fairy had a divinely-aimed boulder not come careening down from the ledge above them and sent the tektite off the crooked path and tumbling down the mountain. The rock then bounced back from the impact and neatly settled itself into the ground.

Navi choked back her surprise and clutched at her unresponsive charge. "Link! Link! Please snap out of it!" She dove around him and flashed her inner light from yellow to blue. "Everything is alright now! But we need to keep moving just in case more of those show up! Hey!"

Just then, the boulder spoke. "Stupid vermin, those things. So long as you come down from where they can't see or feel ya' comin', they're sitting ducks," it said in a voice like wind from a mountain cave. "Are you okay?" The rock turned on its base to reveal legs and arms tucked beneath itself to shield its flat, wide face. "That was pretty close, y'know! That thing might've gobbled you up like the little green rock you are!" The rock-man chuckled and lifted himself to his feet.

Link shakily grabbed Navi from the air and held her to his chest.

The rock-man looked at them inquisitively and then shuffled over on its wide, flat feet. The tendons and bones from it stuck up like the ridges of a miniature set of mountains with rivers of veins running throughout them. "Are you lost? Huh? Can you hear me, little guy?"

Link found his voice. "Are you going to eat us, too?" He was a grasshopper at the feet of a giant.

"EAT you? No! I'm a Goron! I don't eat little person-chips like you! I eat rocks! And calling you one was just a joke!" It waved its rough hands in the air from side to side. "How could I bring myself to eat something with such a sad look on its face? Can you even imagine a tree or a rock with such a heartbreaking expression on its face? It's almost as bad as those creepy one-eye stones! Cheer up, little Chippy, the spider-crab isn't gonna hurt you, and neither am I!"

Slowly, Link nodded. "Are you an adult?"

The Goron looked taken aback. "Well, yes, by most standards, I am. A full-grown Goron, that's me!"

"Oh. I see." The boy stood up and slowly backed away. "Then in that case, please leave us alone."

"Wait! Wait! You think you can't talk to me because I'm a stranger? I just saved your life!" he trotted over to cut Link off, his heavy footsteps making great thuds in the mountain clay. What are you even doing up here? It's gonna be nighttime soon and you're awfully far from Kakariko!"

"I want to go far away from there. I am not going back." Link absentmindedly gazed at Navi through his clutched hands and remembered what Impa had said to him as she had escorted him out of Castle Town. "I am looking for the Spiritual Stone of Fire."

At that, the Goron laughed. "The Goron's Ruby? You want that? Ha! You'll have to ask Big Brother about taking that treasure!" He giggled some more, like the sound debris cascading down a high cliff face makes. "If you keep going up this path, you'll find Goron City, where he is. And hey, you can even stay the night there if you want. It's certainly nicer than out here. Want me to take you?"

From within his hands, Navi urged him to accept the Goron's offer. "No, thank you," he replied.

"You sure, little Chippy? There might be more tektites!"

"That's very nice of you, but I will find it by myself." Link honed his eyes to the ground and ducked by his huge and helpful would-be guide.

"Well. U-um," the Goron stuttered, "It was nice meeting you! And be careful! Watch out for some of my brethren rolling around! We don't always look where we are going and I don't want you to end up like that tektite!"

Sullenly, and with snot still all over his face, Link nodded in appreciation and kept walking. He kept his hands clasped until Navi forced them open and zoomed into his face, hushing her livid voice so the Goron could not see her. "What is wrong with you?! We really could use his help! He's a Goron, not a Hylian adult! And even if he was, he wasn't going to hurt you!"

Link's eyes, still reddened and watery from crying, took her in and narrowed. "I already _told_ you. He isn't one of us, so we can't trust him. Not really. It's the same thing with Miss Repa. When I trusted her, she manipulated me. She didn't mean anything by it, but she still did it. And, you know, I think that metal-wearing adult tried to trick me into not going up the mountain. He didn't wanna hurt me, I don't think, but that still doesn't mean I should trust him."

Navi fluttered furiously, fearfully, mouth agape. "…Well, what about Zelda? You said you would trust her. Why?"

"She's a child not of the forest and she has told me exactly what her plans are. She didn't hide anything, She is just like me," he said simply. "So I know I can trust her. I can feel it."

"What about me? You said you would trust me, but I'm not like you. I'm a fairy. For all you know I could be leading you astray and then abandon you."

Link's eyes grew wide. "No. You wouldn't."

In return, the blue fairy crossed her arms and tossed her head.

"Don't say that," Link begged. "Don't _say_ that! No! No! I won't believe it! I don't want to believe it!"

Navi's angered countenance melted into one of regret and concern as she watched the water gather in Link's eyes again.

"Stop! Stop! The Great Deku Tree sent you to guide me, and he is wise and knowing and _I can always trust him_, and if you leave me, you leave him! How could _anyone_ do that unless they were completely evil?!" The boy's shouts echoed down the mountain and he bared his teeth at the fairy in front of him. "And you can't be evil," he whispered, his set jaw weakening. "You are made of more good than I am."

Navi bit her tongue and withheld her probing about her charge's trust in Saria. This boy wasn't stupid, she had been wrong about that. He was brilliant- brilliant and strange, and currently very lost.

But she did hate how he made her look at herself- really _look_- and think about whether or not she could be all the infallible things Link wanted to believe. Navi was a fairy, not a goddess, and she wasn't sure if Link knew the difference. He was, for all of his openness, infuriatingly cryptic.

In fact, it was becoming clear to her that Link had the higher potential for greatness, in the names of both right and wrong, goodness and vileness, once he learned a little more about the world around him and the nature of his destiny.

He may have frozen in the eye of the enemy this time, but Navi had been there when he tore apart the Arachnid Queen Gohma. She had seen the cold, calm instinct that lurked in him and emerged when he had felt fear so long that it had made him numb to its paralyzing influence.

After all, he had gouged her single eye out with his bare hands.

And here, in the lowering daylight, Link looked almost as frighteningly frightened from wrath and hurt. "I'm sorry," Navi hushed. "I'm going to stay with you on this journey. I shouldn't have said that."

Link cried a little more calmly at her apology. "'M sorry, too, because I upset you. I'm so sorry. I'm just so scared." he repeated. Sloppily, he wiped at his face and resumed lumbering up the mountain. "You are scared, too, aren't you?" he asked.

Navi could have lied in an attempt to inspire confidence, and any other day but today she would have, but she knew better now. If Link was going to trust her, she had to trust him, too. "Yes. I am scared."

He nodded and kept walking, still wiping at his face with his clay-covered hands and leaving blood red streaks all over himself.

Navi never specified what- or who- she was scared of. That was alright for now- she would take her charge one step at a time, no more and no less, and that was how they would both see this through to the end.

The two of them made their way to the Goron City in much the same fashion, inching towards the darkness of the setting sun.


End file.
